Ethan Dodd – Visual Artist. Cardiff, Wales

February 7, 2014March 13, 2014

‘East of Eden’ series – Philip-Lorca diCorcia

‘A Little Girl told me Blind People don’t Dream’

I sat in the library the other day, browsing the magazines that detailed the current artistic movements and themes, and i stumbled across a book of photography. I’m not one for photography, I often dismiss it in favour of sculpture or installation; but there was something in this work that resonated within me. diCorcia’s ‘East of Eden paints a bleak outline of our contemporary world, he himself saying the major thing that the works lack is ‘Innocence’. The pieces themselves are a culmination of 15 years of Photography work, taking massive amounts of inspiration from the book of Genesis within the bible, and detailing a long and haunting examination of our lifestyle of over-indulgence and endless consumption.

Interestingly, within the interview there was a passage which described the quote above; earlier in his life, diCorcia heard a little girl say that ‘Blind people don’t dream’, and he has questioned the perceptions of reality ever since that day. Much like the riddles of life, he endeavours to figure out the meaning of this, but can only draw one conclusion at this time; we only dream as the world is so deplorable, the blind man who has not witnessed this, has no need to dream.

This ongoing terror is massively interesting to me, I love such themes. It seems that because of this fear that surrounds our contemporary world, we are slowly retreating within ourselves, away from anything that could possibly harm us.

The image above details a blind couple, and the empty stare they appear to give us.